JW Image Rotator 3.18

Installation

This section details a step-by-step process of how to install the JW Image Rotator onto your page. The download ZIP contains all you need to get started.

Step 1: Transfer the imagerotator.swf and imagerotator.xml file from the ZIP to your website. (Make sure that you’ve also uploaded all photos you want to show onto your site.)

Step 2: Edit the imagerotator.xml file so that it contains the titles, links and image URLs of your images. This can be done by using a simple text editor. If you want to add more photos, just paste additional track blocks in the .xml file.

Step 3: Embed the Image Rotator in your HTML page with the following lines of code. (Note: If you place the files in different directories, be sure to set the references in this embed code accordingly.)

<embed 
  src="imagerotator.swf" 
  width="470" 
  height="160"
  allowscriptaccess="always" 
  allowfullscreen="true" 
  flashvars="file=imagerotator.xml&transition=blocks" 
/>

Notice the flashvars parameter can contain a list of variables for configuring the rotator. To quickly set up FlashVars, read through the following Wiki page with all FlashVars. Select the variables you want to use and insert their names/values onto your page. It’s that simple.

Documentation

Documentation of the rotator can be found at the developer site. It includes the roadmap, source code and bug tickets, as well as:

1. Supported FlashVars (variables) you can select to customize the Image Rotator.
2. Supported playlist formats along with some implementation info.
3. The javascript API calls supported by the rotator.

If you need more help, check out our tutorial on Embedding flash objects. It covers the simple embed method and the SWF Object method.

Support

LongTail receives a lot of requests for creating customized versions of our Image Rotator. In most cases, a clever FlashVars setting can provide the solution you’re looking for, so please check the list of FlashVars.

If you still can’t find what you’re looking for and you’re familiar with ActionScript, you can change the Image Rotator yourself. To get started, we've provided a PDF with clear overview of the application structure. And remember, you can review all the source code from the Wiki.

Here's a list with some frequently-encountered problems.

1. If you get strange display errors on IE (e.g. after refreshing), it’s likely the stage size is not properly set. Use the FlashVars width and height to fix this problem.
2. JavaScript interaction and playing remote files will not work when testing locally because of security restrictions.
3. If your MP3 files playback is is too fast or too slow, they contain variable bitrate encoding or unsupported sample frequencies (eg 48Khz). Please stick to constant bit rate encoding and 11,22,33,44 kHz. If you need a free MP3 encoder, check out iTunes software.

Lastly, for tips, tricks, additional information and bug reports, you can always visit our support forum.